Doñana

[Juan Aragonés]

The past weekend I went to one of my favourite places for birding and photography, Parque Nacional de Doñana, in the southwest of Spain. The last time I visited this area was in the past spring and I really wanted the arrival of the aurum’s rains because during the summer months the wetlands are dry and there is no sign of birds. Now the park and the surrounding areas have some water and there is a good amount of waterbirds.
This couple con cattle egrets are from “El Rocío”, a very small village in the border of the park limits (a fantastic place for photograph flamingos). The light of the rising sun was really terrific and the sky was very clean. Lost of pintails, mallards, coots, pochards, shovelers, red-crested pochards, black tailed godwits, snipes, glossy ibis, spoonbills, flamingos, marsh harrier, gulls, egrets, purple gallinules and a long list of species but yesterday, the birds were very far from the reach of my lens so I concentrated on the cooperative cattle egrets looking for prey items around the wild horses grazing in the marsh.

This image is underexposed because I was trying to capture a flight in full sunny light. The horse was located in an area with shadows and sun and the exposure job was not easy. The flying bird is on shadows and the perched bird has some parts in soft and sweet sunny light and others in the shadows. The BG is full of light, the water reflecting the golden light of the far reed-beds. When I saw the cattle egret flying to the back of a horse with another egret I tried to catch the action. Very little time to change the settings of the camera and as result of this, I got a underexposed frame. I like this image a lot so I decided to work hard on PS to bring it back to life. Blessed photoshop:), five minutes working on levels adjustments, selective noise reduction on the egrets and the BG, a touch of sharpening to the flying bird, some saturation job and the image looks exactly like the scene I saw several hours before. The lack of contrast in the scene is not due to shadows/highlights filter (I didnt used it on this image). I jut tryied to keep the natural soft light and lack of contrast in the original scene!


As always, I would love to hear your comments, opinions and ideas

Nikon D2X, AFS Nikkor 300VR +1,4XTC, HSC mode (6,8 Mp) ISO 320, f4, 1/2500s, handheld, Manual exposure -0,33EV (I am now trying the new CS4 and I like it a lot. Great improvement!)

[Doug Brown]

You did a nice job with CS Juan. Unfortunately, the good light was on the wrong side of the image. The OOF bird is a significant distraction for me, both because it's OOF and because it blocks the in-focus bird.

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Nice colors and timing!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Very interesting light and BG, I also like the crop idea.

[Fabs Forns]

I love the colors of this one. Since the OOF bird seems to be the big concern to me, I tried an illustration using Find Edges at a low opacity with Luminance as blending mode, adding saturation and Snap Art pencil sketch, aslo a very low opacity. hope you like it!

[Juan Aragonés]

I like it Fabs, in fact the most I like in this photograph is the painting quality of the image due to the soft light and subtle colors in combination with the intense golden at the top of the frame. Looking at you repost I see that you saw that painting quality of the image too :)